Inside Pathfinder Tokens: Character Gallery for Foundry VTT

Introduction

Last year, we released an exclusive module called the Pathfinder Tokens: Bestiaries, a token pack that offered high-quality portrait and token artwork for all 1207 actors in the three Bestiaries released for Pathfinder Second Edition. We were overwhelmed by the positive response to that module and we’ve been eager to follow it up with another token pack ever since, even as we’ve been working on other projects. Since then, we’ve been hard at work on new modules, like our conversion of the Pathfinder: Kingmaker adventure path, all while continuing to push the potential of the core software even further forwards, with the release of Foundry VTT Version 12 bringing in a whole new suite of exciting features.

In that time, a lot has changed in the Pathfinder ecosystem too: the Pathfinder system has been remastered, playtesting has begun for a Starfinder Second Edition, and Paizo recently released a Monster Core token pack, which expands on the Pathfinder Tokens: Bestiaries module by providing artwork for the new creatures released in the remaster.

However, for all that’s changed, one thing hasn’t—the need for more tokens! And so we’re incredibly excited to announce the release of a brand new token pack, the Pathfinder Tokens: Character Gallery, which is planned to release on Wednesday, August 21.

In this blog post, I thought I’d start by introducing the Character Gallery, and talk about some of the reasons we’re so excited for it to release, as well as share a few behind-the-scenes peeks at the development of the module.

Module Features

Pathfinder Tokens: Character Gallery is a brand-new token collection, comprising ~1200 unique portraits, each accompanied by a hand-crafted character token. Our intention is for this pack to cover a wide range of playable ancestries, making it an ideal tool for filling the ranks of previously faceless NPCs, or for picking out the perfect portrait for a heroic adventurer.

The module includes:

• ~1200 high-resolution portraits and tokens depicting characters of a variety of ancestries, professions, and classes, including high-profile named characters from the world of Golarion
• Seamless compendium image replacement for ~100 actors from the Pathfinder Second Edition game system
• Built-in support for Foundry VTT's Dynamic Tokens functionality
• A bespoke new application that can be used to browse and filter the artwork from within Foundry, searching for assets by name or filtering by tags like ancestry, equipment, or armor
• Integration with the Pathfinder Tokens: Bestiaries module, allowing it to add its artwork to the Character Gallery application when both modules are active, with the potential for this integration to be used by other modules in the future
• Detailed datasheets filled out with relevant metadata for each imageset, facilitating their sorting and filtering by the application

The format and scope of the module should be readily familiar to anyone who knows our previous token project, the Pathfinder Tokens: Bestiaries module. The new pack features about as many tokens as the Bestiary pack, and we were delighted to bring back Ian Hildebrandt as our artist, ensuring that the tokens are created to the same—or better—standard that you’ve come to expect.

We’ve also taken full advantage of some new core innovations to push the features of the module even further. For instance, at release, the Character Gallery tokens will be fully configured for use with Foundry VTT’s new Dynamic Token Rings framework, which means they’ll be readily compatible with any special features or visual effects that other content creators and module developers might implement.

Perhaps of greater significance to the average user, though, is a brand-new custom application, developed specifically for this module, which provides a means to search and filter the collection of artwork with ease from within your game world. For more information on the features of the Character Gallery application, you can check out the module’s package page, but I thought I might also share some behind-the-scenes stories of how we first began designing and implementing the feature!

Story Time: Creating the Character Gallery Application

Ever since working on the Bestiaries token pack last year, we’ve been considering various ideas for what a follow-up token pack might look like. The idea of an NPC-focused pack was always one of our favourites, but one obstacle we had to solve before we could justify it was finding a way to deliver the art in a convenient and user-friendly way, from within the application. With the Bestiaries, we could map the artwork straight to the creatures inside the system compendiums, all configured and available without any effort required, but with an NPC or PC-focused pack, we weren’t initially sure how to provide a similar level of quick access. We didn’t want the module to just be a folder of assets—even incredibly gorgeous assets—that the user had to organise and manually assign to characters themselves. We needed a better solution.

The idea that ended up becoming the Character Gallery application first was actually first explored when working on our module for the Pathfinder: Kingmaker adventure path. When we were implementing the settlement-building subsystem, I had developed a very simple application that users could use to browse the different building assets and place them onto a scene to represent their growing village. The idea struck me as a good way to solve the very similar problem with delivering NPC artwork, so I worked on a quick, hasty mock-up during our next Free Project Friday—a team-wide tradition where, on the last Friday of each month, we work on individual passion projects or crazy ideas and pitch them to the rest of the team.

Just for fun, I thought I’d share a rare screenshot of that initial prototype as it looked after only one day of work. As you can see, the idea of a central grid view where the artwork thumbnails were displayed in big “cards” was always a core part of the vision—I wanted you to be able to see what you were picking. The filtering functionality on the left-hand side, meanwhile, was inspired by Pathfinder’s own traits mechanic, and echoes some aspects of the PF2E system’s compendium browser.

If you can look past the rough exterior, and the fact that many of the buttons didn’t work, it showed promise—and it’s kind of remarkable, now, to see simultaneously how little and how much the application changed in its journey to the final product we have today.

Where does that data come from?

All the metadata about each piece of art—the tags, the source, the label—are loaded from a datasheet, provided by the module, which contains a range of useful information about each imageset. These datasheets are what allow the app to filter and search the entire collection for the exact piece of art you need at any moment.

As you can see, the application also has a tab for searching for artwork of companions, as well as player characters. For the Character Gallery, that mostly means the sprites and leshies, but for users with the Bestiaries token pack installed, they’ll see various animals, crawling hands, and other creatures populating that tab as well!

This is possible thanks to a hidden but powerful feature of the application—it can load more than one datasheet at once, allowing other modules to create a datasheet of their own which allows their artwork to be loaded into the application. It’s our hope that, by including module support in this way, we’re creating opportunities for future modules—both ours and those developed by other creators—to integrate with the Character Gallery. In fact, the ease of module development on the Foundry VTT platform means that this functionality is in reach of many end users, as well, if they’re interested in creating and loading their own custom datasheets into the module.

I could go on, but I should save some surprises for the module’s release. I’m very excited for people to get their hands on it, and I hope that it lives up to the vision we set out with! If anyone has any questions, I or some of my colleagues will surely be replying in the comments, and there’s also an FAQ on the module’s page on our website with a little more information.

Viviane Charlier (Cora),
Foundry VTT Content Development Team